Rhetoric is the art of persuasion through communications, either written or spoken. There are always two components to rhetoric – the rhetoric and the audience. Rhetoric’s aim is to make comparisons, evoke emotions, censure rivals, and convince their audience to switch a point of view. Rhetoric takes the form of speech, debate, music, story, play, movie, poem; nearly anything that can be written or spoken may be a piece of rhetoric. In fact, it may be the rhetoric that makes the art.

In the poem, The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost, the author provides a brief insight into life’s travels:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

The rhetorical line of this poem is: “I took the one less traveled by / And that has made all the difference.” Frost has set a scene for us of decision, or indecision, and given us a glimpse into his thoughts, which may be our thoughts at any given moment. His work is convincing us that in order to perhaps make a difference in our lives, we should tread whether others have infrequently traveled.

When we talk about skilled negotiators, people with “charisma” and “charm,” we are really talking about the art of rhetoric. We use rhetoric in our everyday lives when we create a job resume, negotiate to buy a car, when we debate politics, or even when we are convincing a teenager to clean their room. We may do it every day, but do we really understand the finer points of rhetoric? It seems to be the pinnacle of the Trivium and the highest goal we can work toward in order to communicate our ideas with one another effectively.